[Taffss]

I wanted to know ways of studying chemistry. People say you need to understand basics and do problems. Basically, how many hours a day would it take in order to achieve A*, I am also doing A2 biology and A-level maths.

[lsaul95]

(Original post by Taffss)
I wanted to know ways of studying chemistry. People say you need to understand basics and do problems. Basically, how many hours a day would it take in order to achieve A*, I am also doing A2 biology and A-level maths.

I am starting A-levels in September after a year out of education. Most of my friends started A-levels last septemer and are getting U's and E's because they under-estimated the amount of work you have to put in.
I have been told you should be doing at least 4 hours per week of independent study (not including homework) PER SUBJECT. However, this amount greatly depends on the person. If you can pick up concepts easily and put them into practice then you may not have to put as much time in as, say, someone who has to go over a topic multiple times before grasping the concepts, etc.

My method is in 4 steps.
Pre-read, attend, post-read, revise.
Pre-read - look over the syllabus before lessons to familiarize myself a little with what we'll be going over.
Attend - Go to the lesson, this is where the majority of learning should be done.
Post-read - Spend time at home going over what we did in lesson.
Revise - Go over everything again about a month or two before exams, revising the way which is best for me, which is doing past papers and making flash cards/posters/power-points, etc.

[je t'aime]

Tips? Don't do it. Honestly i hated it



Otherwise work from the beginning of the year, do lots of past papers, always ask straight away if you don't understand something. Learn the definitions (I did OCR A)

[PythianLegume]

Doing Past Papers is invaluable. When my class does a mock paper on a topic, it is rare for anyone to get an A (despite many getting it in the test) because although we know the facts, we don't know the specific phrasing that the mark scheme wants; learning these phrases is key to getting an A/A* grade. Understanding the concepts is more important than putting in the work - it's not about repeating the facts so you remember them, you have to actually understand what it means. This can be done easily by going through after each lesson, before you do HW, and recapping the information by reading your notes/the textbook/chemguide.co.uk (amazing site). How many hours will depend on you, like someone already said. For me, I barely do more than the work set and get top marks (and wish some other subjects were this easy), but others put in a lot of work and still struggle. TBH, if you are aiming for A*, you really need to be more like me - an A* is not something that you can necessarily get with hard work, you have to be a top student too (I don't mean a genius, but if your GCSE grades are mostly A/A* then you should be fine).
The key is past papers! If you do these and are not getting an A*, put more work in!

[JMaydom]

Simple answer on how to get the A* in A-level chemistry is to spend most of you time on past papers and learn answers by heart. (At least for salters chemistry)

It's of course important to know the subject but that won't get you the A* unless you have an unnatural knack for knowing what the examiners are looking for. It's examined by people that aren't experts in the subject so they mark long answer questions by looking for key words, you don't get the marks even if what you write is correct. Fortunately that Uni that changes as lecturers mark the papers.
If you can identify these key words then you can easily get the max marks for long answer questions.

Sometimes questions do require you to have a flair for chemistry as they introduce a new subject and you have to work things out with the information given, but mostly they follow the pattern of past paper questions.

Overall, despite being mind nummingly boring (and slightly dependent upon your exam board) experience shows that this is the best way I'm afraid.